Sweet Things
by Hippothoe
Summary: Katniss couldn't believe she'd let Peeta talk her into this.


This is just a bit of silliness I thought up while sitting in front of a blank Word page. I'm sure it's highly inaccurate, and probably completely out of character, but it was fun to write, and I hope you enjoy it.

Let me know what you think!

**Disclaimer:** 'The Hunger Games' trilogy is the sole property of Suzanne Collins. I'm only playing around with her characters.

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Katniss couldn't believe she'd let Peeta talk her into this.

Katniss Everdeen, winner of the 74th annual Hunger Games, daughter, wife and Mockingjay, had had enough. This was entirely too much, and now she wanted out.

The only question was how.

Looking at Peeta sleeping beside her, as carefree as a baby, she nearly kicked him out of the bed. Deciding that would be uncouth, she settled, instead, for a hard shove to the ribs, as she unwound herself from the cocoon of bed sheets that surrounded her, a barrier against the cold. The heating system in their house was quite good – they weren't living in the arena, anymore, after all – but Peeta was pedantic about all things Katniss these days. It was another infuriating aspect of the whole situation.

As she swung her legs over the side of the mattress, she harshly pulled half the blanket off of him. Peeta had the nerve, of all things, to smile, curling luxuriously into his pillow and mumbling incoherently. "Mmm_careful_." He tugged the blanket back over himself.

_Careful?_ Katniss nearly snorted. He'd have done well to take his own advice.

He had, after all, got her pregnant.

Katniss Everdeen, who'd been supple and lithe and dexterous her entire life – who'd won the Hunger Games – was now the size of a house.

A big one.

Peeta Mellark, she'd come to understand, could be very, very persuasive.

She wanted to kill something. If only her bladder would stop threatening to burst.

How Peeta could sleep at all was beyond her. Katniss, who usually slept like the dead, had not managed to doze off for more than five hours in the last six months. She'd be lucky to sneak three hours before she woke up with the sound of rushing water in her ears, and have to sprint – well, _waddle_ – to the bathroom.

Tonight was no exception.

Only she had a particularly vicious case of heartburn this time.

Katniss couldn't believe people did this willingly.

Groaning, she pushed herself slowly off the bed, arching her back to work out the kinks and hearing the satisfying pop of cracked joints as she rotated her wrists and shoulders. She was so heavy now that it was an effort to stand upright, but she managed it, gingerly testing her weight on her feet. They tended to swell these days, turning puffy and pinkish and painful, the skin blanching a ghostly white if pressed too hard, and she laid the blame for all of it Peeta's door. He didn't deserve any sympathy. Not when her toes were numb half the time.

Katniss, swathed in darkness and a powder blue nightgown with a little white bow in the front, moved carefully forward, bracing against the wall for balance. She walked through the darkness like an acrobat on a tightrope, terrified of tripping. There were sharp corners and objects everywhere; lamps and footstools and bedside tables. Uncomfortable as she was, it'd be worse if she had to give birth with two broken legs.

She fumbled for the light in the bathroom and flicked it on, flooding the room with golden light from the humming light bulb. Inside it was blessedly cool, the tiles cold against her bare skin, and she found herself longing for a bath, but decided unanimously against it. It might wake Peeta up, and she didn't want him to see her naked; it seemed, in some perverted and incomprehensible way, to arouse him. It was disgusting.

Sighing her disappointment, Katniss closed the door, making sure not to lock it, in case she toppled over like a detonated building and needed Peeta to help her. Pushing her hair out of her face, she pulled her sturdy white undergarments down her legs and sat down, waiting for blessed relief to come. Before Peeta had done this to her – Katniss refused to believe that she had been a willing party to anything of which the outcome was _this_ – Katniss had never considered that she would feel so thankful for the existence of a wash closet next to her bedroom. In District 12, such things were inconceivable.

Katniss made sure to wash her hands thoroughly afterward, and splashed water on her face and neck too. She was frequently hot these days, sweating profusely. Yet another joyous side-effect of her condition. She smoothed a dab of moisturising cream over her face to keep it soft, revelling in the delicate smell of roses; some of the habits she'd picked up in the capital, years ago, had proved hard to kill. She looked at herself levelly in the mirror, assessing the dark hair, longer now and so clear it shined, and the iron-grey eyes, no longer dulled with hunger. Her face skin was rosy now with comfortable living. She looked healthy.

It was strange. Katniss turned away from the mirror, drying her hands roughly on the towel.

Inside the bedroom Peeta was still asleep, a pale bar of moonlight falling across his bare chest and limning, in bright silver, the left side of his face. He looked terribly young at that moment, the furrows of concentration and anxiety smoothed from his brow, and his lips gently curved in a half-smile. Despite her discomfort, Katniss was touched; there was a time, not too long ago, when she'd never dreamed that they would have this, here.

"Peeta," she murmured, bending, pressing a fingertip gently to trace his eyebrow. She kissed him, as soft as a whisper, on his cheek, momentarily setting aside her indignation. It was the least she could do, Katniss thought. He did, after all, worry about her so much.

"Peeta." He muttered in his sleep, leaning into her touch. She revelled in the smooth feel of his skin, whole and tanned and healthy. He wasn't gaunt and sick anymore, spilling blood. He was safe.

She stroked her stomach thoughtfully as she looked at her husband, knowing that, if he were awake, he'd be embarrassed. Under her hand, mimicking the curve of her belly, she felt the child shift and move, like a small minnow darting inside of her. She wondered if the baby could hear her talking.

"If you're anything like your father, you probably have the ears of a fox," she said quietly, addressing her bump. To her surprise, it shivered in response. "The wits of one, too, I think." She chuckled lowly, then picked her airy bed robe up off the floor, and pulled it on. It fell around her in delicate folds of primrose yellow. "Let's see if we can't find something to eat. I'm sure Peeta's cooked up a storm."

Katniss Everdeen's appetite for food had never been so strong. It was fortunate, she thought, that she was married to a baker. Even in their new life, with District 12 and the Capitol and the death and destruction of the rebellion so remotely ensconced in their past, Peeta still loved to make cakes. He loved to decorate them, too, and was as remarkably good at it as ever. He was the finest artist Katniss knew. She threaded her way down the stairs and into the kitchen, careful not to wake Peeta.

Their kitchen was large, made artfully out of glossy dark wood and equipped with enough food to feed a rebellion. Something had happened to Katniss in her life in District 12, and to Peeta too in a way, that made the very sight of food necessary for her peace of mind; they liked, both of them, to have a house stocked well with food and drink. Maybe it was the years of going hungry, of worrying about feeding Prim and her mother and about not finding enough. Katniss never wanted any of her children – if she could ever be persuaded to do this again – to go hungry. Clutching her belly with both hands, she whispered fiercely to the baby. "You never will. I swear it. You may keep me up half the night with your tossing and turning, but even you don't deserve that." She was rewarded with a sarcastic kick to the belly button, which she guessed meant "thank you."

Because of Peeta's talents, Katniss had a house that way always full of cakes and breads and hearty meat pies. It was to these, arranged attractively under glass domes on the kitchen table, that Katniss now went. Quietly, she found herself a plate and a fork, and then she sat herself down with a tall glass of milk on at the table, her feet braced on the cushion of the opposite chair. She cut herself a decadent slice of dense chocolate cake, spread liberally with buttercream filling, helped herself to a pair of sweet rolls dusted delicately with cinnamon, and decided to conclude with a wedge of meltingly soft butterscotch. Taking an anticipatory bite of the cake, Katniss groaned. Peeta Mellark had an exasperating fondness for sweet things, and Katniss only pretended to mind.

It was delicious. All of it. The baby was practically doing somersaults for sheer bliss.

"I know," Katniss agreed, after the baby executed a particularly enthusiastic backflip. "He's brilliant. But we can never tell him that. He might think we approve what he's done to us."

Katniss followed a bite of chocolate cake with a sip of milk, sighing in contentment. If there was one upside to being pregnant, it was probably this, she conceded. No one in their right mind would feel guilty for overeating when pregnant.

Katniss demolished the entire plate, sucking caramel sauce off of her fingers and feeling so wonderfully full and depleted that she could almost have been persuaded to forgive Peeta.

"In the mood for anything else?" Katniss asked her belly. A desultory pirouette signified "no". "Good. Because I'm stuffed." Katniss set down her fork, licked clean, with a click.

"Who are you talking to?"

Startled, Katniss swivelled around, and saw Peeta padding barefoot into the kitchen. Yawning hugely, he filled a glass with water and, stretching luxuriously, sat down beside her. She noticed, with disappointment, that his chest was no longer bare; he'd put on a shirt. She rather admired him when he was unclothed. Peeta really did have a very nice body. She was (now more than ever, perhaps) very attracted to him.

Which probably explained why she was pregnant.

"No one," Katniss replied evenly, maintaining firm eye contact with her husband. He was, at that moment, looking particularly handsome with his hair tousled and his eyes gleaming in the half-light. It had to be a ruse to get her guard down, Katniss decided.

"You were talking to the baby, weren't you?" Peeta said with a slight smirk, which he tried unsuccessfully to hide behind the rim of his glass.

"Of course I wasn't!" She nudged him indignantly on the shoulder, and he sputtered, laughing.

"There's no need to get upset," Peeta chuckled, coughing slightly. "They can hear us, you know. Babies, I mean. They can hear everything that goes on around them."

Katniss looked. "I know that," she murmured, "She can hear you now. You wouldn't believe the gymnastics she's doing in here. She really likes you." She took his hands, broad and warm, slightly calloused by work and war and hardship, and put them on her, pressing them close under her own.

Peeta grinned, and it made Katniss, though she'd never admit it, ache a little bit inside. She knew he way happy – and so was she, though sometimes it was hard, in more ways that one, to carry a child when there were others – other children – whom she had also loved, who were no longer alive. _Prim, Rue. _It hurt. It hurt, too, that she was moving on, that their memory was, though she was unwilling to let it, fading.

Peeta raised an eyebrow. "She?" he said, laughing. "Are you sure it's a girl? What if it's a boy?"

"Of course she's a girl," Katniss said, leaning into her husband and wrapping her arms around him. She loved the feel of his smooth skin. "What else could she be?"

Peeta smiled. After a while, he said, "I talk to her too, sometimes. When you're asleep. It helps, me more than her, I think. I want her to know, Katniss. I want her to know she's loved."

Katniss cupped his face in her hands, nearly crying, and, bringing him close, she kissed him. Peeta's lips were firm and eager under her own. "She knows. How couldn't she? You've been wonderful to both of us." Though her belly wouldn't allow it anymore without great difficulty, Peeta pulled her to him and held her close. Katniss buried her face in his shirt, breathing in his warm smell; Peeta smelled faintly of sweat and baking bread, and under that, there was the delicate scent of sweet things.

"What should we call her, Peeta?" Katniss murmured, her palm pressed above her husband's heart. It beat, steadily, reassuringly strongly, under her touch. Katniss' head was cradled under his chin; Peeta's soft breathing stirred the soft hairs that swept across Katniss' brow.

Peeta was silent for a moment. Outside, dawn had begun to colour the sky a pale blue, swept hazily with rose, blush-coloured and beautiful. Birds twittered melodic harmonies as coaxing winds rustled the canopies of trees. In a few hours' time, Katniss knew, it would be morning, and the flowers would unfurl.

Then Peeta said, "How about Primrose?"

Katniss smiled.

"It's perfect."

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_Exeunt._


End file.
